The latest crop and livestock assessment by the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development has confirmed that most crops and pastures are in reasonable shape after the good rains we have been seeing for the last couple of months following a very slow start to the rainy season.
No one is guaranteeing the final harvest yet, but already it looks considerably better than at the same stage last year, and so long as moderately reasonable rains continue, as they are likely to, most dryland farmers will produce a fairly reasonable harvest.
The Government, which made sure that all farmers had access to the required seed and fertiliser inputs at the beginning of the season, and is now making sure that the subsequent fertiliser needs are met, has been backing the efforts of the farmers.
We tend to think about just two factors when we look at a harvest, that is do the farming families have enough food for the next 12 months and does the country as a whole have the same supply?
These are important points, but the third is equally important, that when all farmers from the smallest scale to the most capitalised commercial farmer are producing surpluses, then rural development can take off.
More and more, especially as we build up our irrigation potential to cope with unpleasant breaks in the rain seasons and the hard droughts like we saw last year, the question is becoming how much money will farmers make.
We talk about national food security, and someone does need to have a running calculation over whether our total harvest is enough or if we need imports. But when a farmer goes out into their fields they are not thinking about that at all.
They are wondering how much they will harvest and how much they can sell.
This becomes increasingly important as the percentage of Zimbabweans in farming families continues to fall.
While the rural population is still a majority in Zimbabwe, less than half of all Zimbabweans are now farmers or dependants of farmers.
This is a sign of development, as ever more rural people have other occupations and sources of income, although the rural economy is underpinned by farming.
In developed countries that have maintained the smaller family farms, we now see a majority of the rural population process the produce of the farms, or provide services to farmers such as looking after farm machinery, or make and sell things to farmers.
Already we are seeing some of this in Zimbabwe.
In most seasons, there is good work for builders for example, as a farming family with a bit of profit decides to extend or upgrade the house now that they can afford another batch of materials.
They will spend money on carpentry, on buying more clothes, and all sorts of other needs.
This is one reason why drought can be so devastating in a rural community. It not only hits the farmers who grow their own food, but hits large swathes of others who rely on farmers for their own businesses. And this is also why when there is an okay season, everyone is a lot happier, and when there is a good season everyone cheers.
As we have seen since the drought hit last year, we can use reserves and imports to make sure everyone eats, but this does not create the wealth that we need to create as we push forward in our development.
Last year the economy grew only 2 percent, but the fact that it grew while farming output contracted shows that other sectors, in particular mining and tourism, grew and managed to grow more than farming contracted.
But farming still is the source of income for the largest group of Zimbabweans and so good and bad harvests have major ripple effects, far more than for example booms and busts in mineral prices might have.
Fairly obviously we need to continue maximising the climate proofing of farming.
Already the experts are making sure everyone gets their money's worth from their inputs by having the right seed for the right crop in each area.
Farming techniques have been developed that can make maximum use of whatever rain does fall.
And the Government is pressing ahead hard with expanding irrigation, so more and more of what we eat and sell can cope with dry spells and a drought.
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We hope that this irrigation will be maximised by allowing supplementary irrigation, rather than an all or nothing approach.
The commercial farmers on their medium farms do not fully irrigate a summer crop, even in a drought year, rather using irrigation to get the crop established earlier, then filling in the dry spells.
Even in a bad drought they still get more than half the water their crops need from rain, so the irrigation available can grow more than twice as much as a dedicated pure irrigated crop.
The good rains that have already fallen have been refilling the dams that did not fill last season and were run down in the months since.
Already far more water has flowed into these dams this season than last season, another sign that our rains are so much better.
The two huge cornerstone dams of the Lowveld irrigation have now spilled, meaning that the irrigation in that part of the country is guaranteed for some time to come, since these dams were designed to use the good seasons to irrigate in the bad seasons.
